PESHAWAR, April 8: With the nation focused on next month’s electoral battle, security forces have taken their heaviest toll in one of the bloodiest and most difficult operations in Tirah Valley, according to security officials.

They said heavy fighting had been raging in the mountainous tribal region bordering Afghanistan since the launch of an unannounced military operation in the valley on Friday. Security forces have come up against stiff resistance from militants affiliated with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TPP).

They acknowledged that four days of fighting had taken the lives of at least 26 soldiers and officers, including an officer of the Special Services Group. They put the militants’ death toll at 85, although there was no independent confirmation of the claim.

This appears to be the highest number of casualties suffered by security forces in any operation in the first four days of its launch, indicating how tough the battle is in one of the most dangerous terrains in the tribal region.

“Fighting has been heavy on the first two days. Resistance is still there. (But) security forces are making steady progress,” a security official said.

Fighter jets from the Pakistan Air Force pounded militants’ positions in Akakhel and Maidan Bagh areas. The Elite Special Services Group of the Army has also been pressed into the battle for the strategic Tirah Valley, which sits astride the famed Tora Bora mountain range in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province.

Under pressure from advancing security forces in adjacent Upper Orakzai, the TTP-backed militants overran Tirah on March 18, taking control of the valley in Khyber tribal region from the pro-government Ansar-ul-Islam militant group and causing an exodus of 43,000 people, according to officials in the tribal administration.

Majority of the newly-displaced Afridi clansmen were women and children they said.

Area people said the TTP fighters included militants from Orakzai, Waziristan, Swat, Mohmanad and Bajaur and some Uzbeks.

“The fall of Tirah was a huge setback for us. Just when we thought the militants were all holed up and had nowhere to run to, they managed to break the siege and take control of Tirah”, a senior government official admitted.

Tirah’s fall has set alarm bells ringing in Peshawar which is just a stone throw away from Bara, a plain area in the foothills of the mountainous region. “Peshawar is just an-hour drive,” as one official put it. “This will make (security) situation (in the city) all the more precarious.”

But security officials said measures had been taken to prevent militants’ infiltration into Bara from Tirah. “We have arrangements in place,” an official said though he conceded that militants might attempt to intensify pressure on the provincial capital to ease off pressure in Tirah.

A lush green forested, snow-bound valley, Tirah has long served as one of the smuggling routes between Pakistan and Afghanistan, though battles for its control between militant groups — Lashkar-i-Islam led by Mangal Bagh, pro-government Ansar-ul-Islam and the TTP — have caused massive exodus from the area.

Security officials believe that the regaining of the control over Tirah would bring the much-needed security and state control to Bara and by extension to Peshawar.

They said that more than 500 battle-hardened TTP men driven out of Orakzai, Swat, Mohmand and Bajaur had found sanctuary in Tirah.

“It is their last stand. They will either have to fight till their last man or flee to Afghanistan, just like they did elsewhere,” an official said. “But we know this is not going to be easy. It is a tough call and a tough war,” he added.